


Just a Flash

by Saxifactumterritum



Series: Moments universe [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Stargate, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 15:35:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19212385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saxifactumterritum/pseuds/Saxifactumterritum
Summary: John's home on leave, he lies on Rodney's floor. Hes sad. Not much angst.Set before DADT was repealed, like the show





	Just a Flash

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: quite casual use of hhe word fa**ot. Not relly hate language? John used it for himself in response to Rodney being upset over possible homophobia if john was out while serving

Rodney gets home to find major John Sheppard lying prone on the livingroom floor, an arm flung over his eyes, in his dress-uniform. It’s strange, to say the least. Rodney walks around him, then prods him with a foot.

 

“Ow,” John grumbles, not moving at all.

 

“Hi?” Rodney says. “Did you break into my house?”

 

“Yeah,” John says.

 

“In order to lie on my floor? I haven’t vacuumed in a while.”

 

“You pay a cleaner to come in and do it every week,” John says.

 

“I do? Huh. Ok, so you knew it’d be clean today and decided that was what you wanted to do with your afternoon?” Rodney says.

 

“My back’s killing me,” John mutters, and Rodney’s fascinated to see his face going pink with embarrassment as if this is a personal failing. “My XO is great, real talented, lovely to work with, but he has utterly shit taste in furniture. His sofa is my new nemesis. I might blow it up, I’m a major, I have plenty of access to C4. I could totally make his sofa explode.”

 

“Right,” Rodney says, going through to the kitchen to get an ice cream. He gets one for John too. “You might set fire to the whole house, though. Why are you sleeping on Lorne’s couch? Don’t you have a place here?”

 

“No,” John says. Rodney sits cross-legged beside him and drops the ice lolly on his stomach. “What gave you that impression?”

 

“Um, you used to leave the office, I assumed you didn’t sleep in a crate under the desk. I didn’t actually think you were a dog,” Rodney says, nudging the ice cream when John doesn’t take it. It’s the good sort, fruitiness on the outside and soft ice-creaminess inside, and no deadly citrus flavours flung in willy-nilly. “Where’d you sleep before you went off to die in a desert?”

 

“it's CSAR. I wasn’t the one doing the dying,” John says. Rodney gives the ice cream a nudge again. “What are you doing? Stop poking- oh, cool.”

 

Rodney gets the feeling John is talking around the issue of housing. Surely. Rodney narrows his eyes and examines John, looking for tells.

 

“Ok, well, whatever. Why are you dressed all fancy?” Rodney asks. “Don’t eat that lying on your back, you’ll choke.”

 

“Not sure I can get up,” John says, continuing with his ice lolly with no regard for accidentally asphyxiating himself with grape juice. What an embarrassing way to die. “I’m state-side for a funeral.”

 

“Oh,” Rodney says. “Sorry. Did I know you were home?”

 

“Nah,” John says. “We’re only back for a few days, I’m only in the city because Lorne lives here. Dex’s family are about two hours’ drive, tiny little town.”

 

“Was it, um, nice? Wait, did you go yet?”

 

“Yeah, it was this morning. It was a good send off, quite small and quiet. He hasn’t, hadn’t got a lot of people.”

 

“Was he on your team?”

 

“I flew Apaches with him, what, ten years? About ten years ago. Me and him and Mitch, lots of dirty runs to take out suspected… anyway. Mitch died, me and Dex went separate ways. He nudged Lorne my way when he was hustling for a promotion and I pulled him onto my team, so when he died we requested leave,” John says. “Three days, we’ve got to report back to base tomorrow.”

 

“You can sleep on my bed,” Rodney says. “I have the best mattress.”

 

“I told Lorne already,” John says, smiling. “Thanks. He thinks you’re a girl, by the way. That bother you?”

 

“No, I’m not a misogynist. Nothing wrong with- oh you mean because. Yeah. No, no, it’s ok. You don’t have to lob yourself out of a closet,” Rodney says. Then, softer, looking at anything but John, “especially if it keeps you safe. I want you safe. Don’t want them not showing up or not watching your back because they think you’re a faggot.”

 

“I am a faggot,” John says. “OK. Thanks. Um, I was considering. I mean, I’m, this tour’s up in a couple months, I could visit.”

 

“I thought that was the plan,” Rodney says. “You said, when you were state-side you’d come here, and when you were deployed I could email you to my heart’s content even if it was twenty times a day.”

 

“Didn’t expect you to take that as a challenge,” John grumbles, but he’s grinning, his eyes bright. Not a real complaint. “The other guys settle in to a good book in the evenings, I’m like ‘I’ll just get through this novel from my guy back home then I might have five minutes for War and Peace’. You’re giving Tolstoy a run for his money.”

 

“You finished War and Peace a month ago,” Rodney points out. He’s done with his ice cream so he stretches out beside John and takes his hand. The evening’s quite sunny, not particularly warm but it’s streaming in through the windows and it’s nice to lie in. It’s warm inside, at least.

 

“I don’t know half as much math as you seem to think I do,” John says.

 

“Maybe not but you pick it up. Which, by the way? Most people can’t intuit complex mathematical concepts from context,” Rodney says.

 

“Only when it’s airplanes,” John says, and he’s smiling again, because he thinks there’s nothing in the world except flying, nothing in the world except being up in the air. He’d said, once, when he was hanging around Rodney’s office out of boredom and being annoying, that he’d only done math to the level he did because he thought it’d help him fly better. “Most people send their deployed loved-ones romantic notes and declarations of adoration, you send me math proofs. You’re weird.”

 

“So are you,” Rodney says. It doesn’t sting when John says it, probably because when John says it, it sounds like ‘I love you’. “Oh, I didn’t eat dinner yet. Pizza?”

 

“Mm, ok,” John says, sounding sleepy.

 

“I’m not getting pineapple,” Rodney says, preemptively.

 

“Dex used to get pineapple. He’s the one who turned me on to it,” John says, sly and amused and manipulative. Rodney listens to John’s breathing, the tiny catch.

 

“Yeah, ok,” Rodney says, shifting to rub a hand over John’s stomach. “Ok.”

 

He gets up and gets the phone, dialling his favourite place. He gets a pasta dish as well and the guy on the other end, recognising Rodney, says they’ll throw in a couple of arancini for half-price. For loyalty. John’s put an arm across his eyes again when Rodney turns back so Rodney goes to change into some more comfortable clothes and put his things away from the day. He checks his email and gets some plates and then goes back to John.

 

“Let’s get you off the floor,” Rodney says.

 

“‘kay,” John mumbles, sounding half-asleep again. He holds out an arm and lets Rodney heave him up, wincing, saying “ow, ow, ow, ow” all the way up.

 

“Um, sofa? Or the dining room chairs?”

 

“Hard chairs,” John says, fervently. “I’ll never get out of the sofa.”

 

They sit at the table, side by side, and Rodney gets out two beers and a pack of cards. They’re half-way through a game of gin rummy when the food arrive and John’s half-way to drunk, three beers under his belt. The food sobers him a bit and when he’s eaten he sits, chin resting on his hand, staring glumly at the wall.

 

“Did you come here just because of the argument with the sofa?” Rodney asks. “I mean, am I comforting you?”

 

“I’m fine,” John says, shaking off his mood a little. “My back honestly hurts.”

 

“Ok. Do you want to watch a movie? I’ve got a TV in my room.”

 

“I remember,” John says, smile flickering, not quite reaching his eyes. “Yeah, alright. You pick.”

 

“Any parameters?”

 

“Something without soldiers,” John says, then shrugs. “Anything’s fine, never mind.”

 

Rodney picks Lilo and Stitch. It’s a kids’ movie but he loves it and it’s fairly prosaic. He forgets that there's anything sad in it, doesn’t remember until it happens, until John’s pressing his face into Rodney’s shoulder and making desperate sounds, hand clenching in Rodney’s t-shirt, fighting and then giving in to grief. Rodney holds on.

 

“I’m sorry he died. From the stories you’ve told me, he sounded like a good man,” Rodney says, when John’s calmer. John nods, embarrassed. He’s also, if Rodney’s not mistaken, in pain. “Did you do something? Other than sleep wrong.”

 

“We had a bit of a collision, couple of days ago,” John says. “I wrenched something, I think. The sofa is the culprit though.”

 

“A bit of a… did you crash?”

 

“No.”

 

“What did you collide with?”

 

“Um… enemy fire, maybe,” John says.

 

“Oh my god,” Rodney says. “You’re beyond belief.”

 

“We didn’t crash,” John says, pleased with himself. “It was just a bumpy ride.”

 

Rodney gets him some tylenol and restarts the movie, deciding that for his peace of mind he’s not going to ask John questions any more. Not when John’s assessment of any situation rests on if he did or did-not crash, everything else just background noise. Shot out of the sky, but a good landing? A great day. Rodney decides if John comes home alive, he'll thank any god going.

 

* * *

 

John does come home alive. After that deployment, and after the next, and then he sits in Rodney’s kitchen with an entire bottle of whiskey that he refuses to share, with six lined notepads, with a laptop, with a calculator. After three hours and much swearing John has a mathematical formula that proves without a shadow of a doubt that he’s not getting the promotion. So he drinks a crate of beer and lies on the floor under the table, refusing to move. He’s incredibly hung over the next day so it’s Rodney who takes the call, answering the phone imitating John’s annoying drawl. John’s CO doesn’t recognise that it’s not John and congratulates him on making lieutenant colonel. Rodney crouches and pokes John until he growls.

 

“Colonel Sumner says I’m a lieutenant colonel in the United States Airforce,” Rodney says. “Lucky me, I thought that was a difficult one to get. Think it’s a case of mistaken identity?”

 

John sits up and cracks his head on the underside of the table and spends the rest of the day lying on the sofa every now and then exclaming in surprise.

 

He comes home from that deployment, gets commissioned somewhere far away, and comes home nearly two years later. Rodney emails him several novels a week, visits him when he's not on active duty, gets a couple of visits of his own. He's very glad when John arrives, healthy and whole, a duffle slung over his shoulder and a couple of crates of things ‘on their way’. His XO, Teyla Emmagen, comes along with the crates, bringing Ronon Dex (no relation) and three bottles of whiskey. Rodney gives his home, an actual house now, up to drunk soldiers. They sit out back on the deck and Rodney's surprised to be included by Teyla and Ronon as well as John. They seem like good people and they're not idiots.

 

The following day John gets up and leaves the house at the crack of dawn and bemuses the entire universe by handing in his papers and refusing a new commission and announcing to everyone that he is ‘gay as a peacock well actually pretty bi but bi is like twice the gay’, that he’s ‘going to marry his male lover of many years’, and that he’s going to ‘buy his own helicopter and paint it gay. All the rainbows’. Lorne, now with a cushy aide job in the general's office, films the entire thing and sends it to Rodney, who hasn’t even had coffee yet.

 


End file.
